Slow Covid?

 a few posts back I mentioned slow covid, since after a mild cold I started to develop fatigue with mild exercize and mind fog/slowness in thinking.

Three months later I am slowly improving, but I wonder if it was not a cold but long covid after a mild case of omicron infection.

(Ironically early last year before testing or vaccine were available, I had a major chest infection that lasted 48 hours until my prednisone kicked in. I have had this before with colds, but this one was a bit different. Covid? Probably not, since prednisone stopped the problem, but who knows.)

Since then I have had two shots, but didn't go for the third vaccine booster when it was offered two months ago, since it was less than six months after my shots, and right now there is very little covid in the area.

Harvard blog has an article here on slow covid, but I wonder at the statistics because most in the study were quite sick: people hospitalized or even diagnosed have comorbidities that also can cause subtle cognitive problems. And the article notes that this could be from micro blod clots, viral infection of the brain  (mild encephalitis) or low oxygen levels affecting the brain.

But what about folks who have had a mild case, either because they had been vaxxed, or because they weren't vaxxed but  their immune system was good or because they got the mild omicron varient (of which many cases have few or no symptoms). Some of them were not sick enough to get tested.

But tests are now easy to get in the USA, which is why my son and his wife, a caregiver, when they had cold symptomes, found that despite being triple vaxed, they tested positive for covid (mild) twice.

The skepticism on the shots is because, like masks, they were oversold as cure alls, and then, voila, the virus mutated and the damn shots didn't protect everyone.... we docs are a bit more cynical about such things and know a lot of stuff only helps a bit. But too many people think science and medicine is magic, wheras we docs know that medicine is both an art and a science, and that we still do a lot of magical smoke and mirrors (i.e. reassurance and placebo effect) that helps people get better.

So the question of the day is: is there a huge number of cases of senility, depression, fatigue, heart problems, etc. due to post mild covid or post mild omicron covid infections, and what does this mean for public health authorities?

and is this problem only with those who had a major infection, or with people (vaxed or  unvaxed) who had very mild symptoms and often didn't get tested?

Here is a podcast about the problem:

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Dr. C discusses the problem of the mild omicron: lots of non testing, surveys show a huge percent of the population are testing positive, but hospitalizations are not up.

Week beginning 28 March 2022 Percentage of adults, antibodies above a 179 nanograms per millilitre (ng/ml) 98.9% in England

 

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It's not just covid that causes  things like chronic fatigue/ mind fuzziness/ aches and pains. 

Years ago, we had a major outbreak of Mycoplasm Pneumonia (often called walking pneumonia, because people weren't as sick as their x ray suggested they should be).

And we had a few cases of people who simply were too tired to work for months

This same symptoms of chronic fatigue is found with mononucleosis, which is common in college aged students, and with mild hepatitis or chronic hepatitis, and even if you are in the midst of an epidemic you have to watch out for rarer problems like Vitamin B12 deficiency or thyroid problems.

These things often overlap with psychiatric problems, but I wonder if a lot are just called psychiatric problems because the germ hasn't been found yet. Of course, we do see "conversion reactions" that get better after a "green poultice", i.e. financial incentives to stay sick, but that's another story for another time.

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this video suggests most Europeans have immunity to covid, either from shots or from having gotten the virus. So a lot of people getting covid now have partial immunity and these are mild second infections.